Google’s mysterious new Fuchsia mobile OS shown off on a smartphone for the first time

Google’s Android platform is the most widely used mobile operating system in the world. In fact, it’s so popular right now that it’s beyond difficult to imagine a future without Android. Of course, people at one point felt the same way about early smartphone platforms like Symbian and BlackBerry OS, which have been almost completely wiped from the face of the Earth at this point. Some day, iOS and Android will be distant memories as well.

If there’s one thing companies like Nokia and BlackBerry taught us, it’s that companies at the top can only stay at the top if they’re constantly preparing for the future. So, rather than rest on its laurels and sit pretty while Android continues to dominate the smartphone market, Google is already hard at work on a fresh new mobile platform called Fuchsia, which may some day completely replace Android.

Earlier this week, the world got its first look at Google’s new Fuchsia operating system, a top to bottom reimagining of the mobile experience. While apps are at the core of every current mobile platform, Fuchsia focuses on information, pulling details from all installed apps as well as Google’s various services and presenting it all in a scrolling card layout.

Soon after screenshots hit the web, a video was created that showed the Fuchsia OS in action on a computer using developer tools. The new platform is still in the very early stages of development, but the video gave us a good idea of how Google’s vision might work. Now, however, Fuchsia has popped up on an actual smartphone for the first time. This gives us an even better idea of what the platform might be like in real life usage. 9to5Google created the video, and you’ll find it embedded below.

While Android is built on Linux, Fuchsia is a complete reimagining of mobile platforms built from the ground up using Google’s own Magenta kernel and Google’s own programming language. Google’s vision of life after Android is a stark departure from what we’ve seen from the company in the past, and Google seemingly wants to ensure that it can control every aspect of the platform from start to finish.